The Son

Chapter Fifty-eight. Diaries of Peter McCullough, SEPTEMBER 1, 1917

The shadow follows me everywhere; I see him in the corner at supper, biding his time; he stands behind me as I sit at my desk. As if a great fire were burning in front of me. I imagine reaching for it… letting the flames carry me off.

I ride to the casa mayor and put my ear to the rock. I hear the bell of the church, children calling, women’s shoes.

A memory from the day after the killings:

My father postulating, absentmindedly, that María’s survival was a kind of tragedy. Had she died, all the Garcias’ anger and sadness would have disappeared from the earth. His words have become a moving picture, playing over and over in my mind. I imagine putting a revolver to his head while he sleeps. I imagine the well shooter parking his truck next to the house, setting a match to the nitro bottles.

Of course this has always been inside me. It was only waiting for a moment to escape. There is nothing wrong with my father: he is the natural. The problem is those like myself, who hoped we might rise from our instinctive state. Who hoped to go beyond our nature.

SEPTEMBER 4, 1917

It came to me this morning: she is dead. I paced my room but then I was sure of it, she is dead, I have never been so sure of anything in my life.

My father came to find me in my office.

“You know I am sorry,” he said. “You know it hurts me to see you like this.”

I didn’t respond. I have not spoken a word to him since that day.

“There are responsibilities,” he told me. “We don’t just get to act like normal people.”

Still I ignored him. He walked around my office, looking at my shelves.

“All right, partner. I’ll leave you alone.”

He came forward, raised his hand to put it on my shoulder, but something in my face…

“It will get better,” he told me.

He stood there another minute like that. Then I heard him shuffle down the hall.

OF COURSE IN person… the idea of hurting him is repulsive. Because, unlike him, I am weak. He did not mind trading a wife and a few sons to get what he wanted… each of us walks in his own fire for his own sins, lies down in his own torment. Mine the sin of fear, timidity… I might have carried María away from this place… it did not even occur to me. Held by the chains of my own mind.

My sun has set, the journeying ways have darkened. The rest of my life hangs above me like a weight; I remind myself that my heart for a brief time ran feral… my most preposterous thoughts came true.

Perhaps another great ice will come and grind all this into dust. Leaving no trace of our existence, as even fire does.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1917

Sally continues to make overtures. As if I will simply forget what she has done. It is only because I no longer defer to her that she is interested in my company. Today she asked if I would continue looking for María. Then she asked, Would you look for me if I disappeared? She is baffled. She did not see María as entirely human; she does not see herself as having done anything wrong. Like stays with like — that is her only principle.

I content myself to think that one day we will all be nothing but marks in stone. Iron stains of blood, black of our carbon, a hardening clay.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1917

This family must not be allowed to continue.